Will SPIDERMAN fly to Broadway - or be remembered as a historic musical flop?

Sunday

Nov 29, 2009 at 12:01 AMNov 29, 2009 at 1:16 PM

(Toby Maguire as Spiderman. File photo)

Hey brother, can you spare $26 million? That's only 2.6 million dimes, after all... And when an impoverished Spidey puts it that away in begging some Wall Street stranger for some spare cash, it may not really seem too much to come up with for Broadway investors, even during the worst recession since the early 1980s.

Still, that's a lot of money to invest in a show - more than twice the cost of the typical Broadway blockbuster musical - and worse, is only the spare change still needed to bring to life on stage the Spiderman legend. With an unprecedented overall budget of more than $50 million, the biggest Broadway musical planned for this 2009-10 season is already a record-breaker. But whether talented director Julie Taymor's new Spiderman musical ever actually opens at New York's Hilton Theatre remains in doubt, following a troubled history of delays, unexpected expenses and a loss of adequate financing. Could the whole project be misdirected and just too big for Broadway?

(Toby Maguire as Spiderman. File photo)

Hey brother, can you spare $26 million? That's only 2.6 million dimes, after all... And when an impoverished Spidey puts it that away in begging some Wall Street stranger for some spare cash, it may not really seem too much to come up with for Broadway investors, even during the worst recession since the early 1980s.

Still, that's a lot of money to invest in a show - more than twice the cost of the typical Broadway blockbuster musical - and worse, is only the spare change still needed to bring to life on stage the Spiderman legend. With an unprecedented overall budget of more than $50 million, the biggest Broadway musical planned for this 2009-10 season is already a record-breaker. But whether talented director Julie Taymor's new Spiderman musical ever actually opens at New York's Hilton Theatre remains in doubt, following a troubled history of delays, unexpected expenses and a loss of adequate financing. Could the whole project be misdirected and just too big for Broadway?

* (Caption: An actor playing Spiderman scales a Jerusalem balcony in 1995 to promote a TV series based on Spiderman, apparently a comic-book franchise so powerful that people want to adapt it to every medium from film and TV to the stage. AP photo: Brian Hendler.)

After her Tony-winning acclaim as the creator of Broadway's The Lion King, Taymor is at the center of the storm surrounding Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. The musical, which has a new score by Bono, is set to star Tony winner Alan Cummings as the Green Goblin, Evan Rachel Wood as Mary Jane.and newcomer Reeve Carney (who appears in Taymor's upcoming film of The Tempest) in the troubled-teenager-with-sticky-super-powers role.

If the musical flops, it may go down in history as the most notorious flop on Broadway since Carrie or Moose Murders. But if the show overcomes all the negative news and rumors to meet with popular and critical approval, then it will become a different kind of titanic legend. After all, Titanic went on to become the record-breaking film blockbuster of all time after similarly preliminary bad reports of James Cameron's hugely expensive film as a folly. Here are excerpts from John Horn's fascinating behind-the-scenes report in the Los Angeles Times: "As this Spider-Man tale opens, the audience sees New York City “on fire and in ruins” as “a section of the Brooklyn Bridge ascends with Mary Jane bound and dangling helplessly from the bridge.” Soon thereafter, a new villainess called Arachne flies into the picture spinning her own deadly trap, and as Spider-Man battles all kinds of criminals he's swinging right over the audience. It sounds like the 3-D opening for the next “Spider-Man” sequel, and even though this superhero story is filled with Hollywood-style special effects, it is instead a glimpse from a confidential script of a planned “Spider-Man” musical -- the priciest undertaking, and among the most troubled productions, in Broadway history. Theater producers are always looking for the next movie-inspired musical blockbuster, and the pedigree of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark could not be more stellar: Sony's three Peter Parker movies have grossed nearly $2.5 billion worldwide, musical songwriters Bono and the Edge have shipped more than 50 million U2 records domestically, and director Julie Taymor's “The Lion King” has earned $3.6 billion globally. But rather than develop into a surefire hit, Spider-Man the musical instead has turned into a tangled web of production delays, unpaid bills and costly theater renovations that even Peter Parker's alter ego would struggle to escape, according to interviews with half a dozen people close to the show who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the show and its finances. Given its immodest ambition to “reinvent Broadway,” the musical's budget has soared to $52 million, counting theater renovations, according to one person familiar with its finances -- more than double the cost of 2006's Lord of the Rings musical, one of the most expensive musicals ever. Like any compelling superhero story, Spider-Man's real-life final act is a cliffhanger. Despite all the talent in its corner, it's still far from certain when -- or even if -- the elaborate musical will open after six years of development, as it has struggled to find a backer to close the budget shortfall. If the show doesn't premiere by the end of April, it not only will miss Tony Award eligibility but also face the expiration of the musical's license from Marvel Entertainment, whose comic-book division created the enduring superhero in 1962. While many factors have contributed to the show's holdup, the musical has been derailed by some of the most complicated staging in Broadway history, as the show's creators try to replicate the superhero's skyscraper-swinging movie maneuvers inside a theater. Three people close to the production say the musical needs to raise as much as $24 million to cover its proposed budget of about $52 million -- $42 million for the show, $6 million for theater renovations and $4 million for theater restorations. At the same time, “Spider-Man's” fixed weekly running costs total around $1 million... Those expenses mean “Spider-Man” would have to sell out every show for as many as four years (a feat only a handful of Broadway shows ever manage) simply to break even, according to several people familiar with the production and its finances."

A final thought: Taymor, with her outsized ambition and imagination, may be looking in the wrong direction for support for a musical of this gargantuan size. Spiderman the musical, in its cost and its effects and especially in all the renovations required at its theater, approaches the scale of Cirque du Soleil productions - which often spend $90 to $150 million including designing a theater from the ground up for permanent installations in Las Vegas. If Spidy doesn't find a welcome on Broadway, don't give up, Julie. Just take a gamble on Las Vegas.